Trim The Fat For Inexpensive, Beneficial Bird Foods Focus On Nature

November 22, 1987|by TOM FEGELY, The Morning Call

If your bird feeding station has been in place for the past few weeks, chances are it already has more takeoffs and landings than the A-B-E Airport.

The usual array of seed-eaters is always in evidence but there are some birds that stop by for other items - specifically animal fat such as suet or bacon drippings. Pound for pound and dollar for dollar, suet is the most economical bird food you can use. Buy a chunk at the local supermarket and hang it on a tree or post. That's all there is to it.

But going a step further and making some special concoctions from suet, bacon fat, peanut butter and bits of fat trimmed from meats will add the variety that spices bird visitations on a daily basis.

Fat is a substitute for the insect diets that woodpeckers, nuthatches, chickadees and some other species rely upon in the warmer months. Insect eggs and larvae are also scoured from tree bark and othernooks and crannies in winter but seldom is enough found to allow them to maintain their necessary diets. These birds will also take seeds in the cold season, making a feeder- visit doubly profitable for them.

Beef suet is the best and most readily available of the fat substances. For less than $1 you can buy a big chunk, often wrapped in plastic and a mesh bag for hanging, in the meat department of grocery stores. If you patronize a butcher for your meats, it's sometimes available free or for a few cents, at best.

The soap-like suet is trimmed from the animal's body in the vicinity of the kidneys. It's cut in large chunks and its firmness makes it perfect for presentation in a hanging bag or cut into smaller pieces and forced into a wire basket specially designed for the stuff. One chunk lasts a long time.

Another way to utilize suet is to grind it and make suet cakes. Add raisins, ground dog biscuits, peanut butter, seeds, fruits, nuts or other items.

Bacon drippings can be smeared directly into the crevices in tree bark or into inch-wide holes drilled in small logs and suspended from branches. I've tried pouring hot bacon grease on the trunk of the ash tree in my backyard but didn't like the appearance of the white streaks that it created when it hardened. By season's end the edible fat was gone but the stain showed well into summer.

Mixtures of melted peanut butter and suet are also welcomed by birds. Present it by pouring the warm concoction into tuna fish cans, orange juice containers or muffin pans. The tuna fish can is, perhaps, the handiest of the three and can be nailed on a tree trunk or placed in a holder (see photo) designed specially for it.

Over the years concerned birdwatchers have voiced the opinion that peanut butter, served alone, may be too sticky for use by birds.We've all had peanut butter stick to the roofs of our mouths but there's been no evidence that birds have this particular problem or that it sticks in their small throats. In cold weather the butter probably is picked off in hard chunks anyway. If you're concerned, however, add some cornmeal to it to break up the gooey consistency.

Cakes with suet and/or peanut butter bases are easy to make, relatively inexpensive and simple to present to the birds. Following are some suet and peanut butter recipes reprinted (with permission) and adapted from The Birds Around Us (1986; published by Chevron Chemical Company).

Basic Bird Cakes

Two cups suet

Two cups peanut butter (plain or chunky)

12 cups cornmeal

Melt the suet in a saucepan. Mix in peanut butter and cornmeal. Spoon the mixture into cans or cups and cool. Offer the cakes in a mesh bag, shallow can or a commercial or homemade wire-wood suet dispenser.